Electronic voting techniques are often used to collect public opinion from an audience during an event. For example, members of an audience may be asked to submit their individual opinions via a communications or computer network during a televised entertainment event or during a political event. The individual opinions may then be analyzed to determine the aggregate opinions of the audience.
Frequently, voting is triggered by a live, broadcast announcement. For example, a televised talent show may ask the audience to vote on a preferred performer, providing a toll-free (8YY) number for audience members to call to place a vote. Vast numbers of votes are therefore placed nearly simultaneously.
In a typical scenario, a media company interested in staging such a television viewer-based voting event contracts with a network provider to provide one or more 8YY numbers that audience members can call from their residential phones to place a vote. Current processes result in those calls being routed through a local company (e.g., an incumbent local exchange carrier (ILEC)) which then determines to which inter-exchange carrier (IXC) to send the call based on the dialed 8YY number. That results in access charges being paid by the contracting network provider to the ILEC for completing the call. Such a network configuration also focuses the calls on a centralized location, thereby potentially clogging up (part of) the network.
Systems have been proposed for overcoming the congestion problem triggered by a telephone voting event. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,768,895 discloses a mobile telephone voting system wherein a polling server authorizes only a predetermined percentage of incoming voting calls. The percentage is increased or decreased in subsequent rounds based on a statistical analysis of the previous results. In that way, the polling server may be scaled down and network congestion is reduced.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,324,266 discloses a local voting system for opinion-gathering in a conference center, an auditorium or the like. The system utilizes telephone handsets for use by the voters. Calling line identity is user to identify any ineligible callers.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,016,337 discusses televoting in an intelligent network. Voting calls are routed according to the dialed number to a service switching point, where the calls are processed. The calls are filtered by calling number to verify that the call is from an allowed area.
A telephone polling method is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,838,774, in which an Advanced Intelligent Network (AIN) is utilized to process ballots. In that method, a local originating switch sends a request to the AIN for information on how to route the call (as is done for any other call even if not a “ballot” call). The AIN determines that the called number belongs to a subscriber to the ballot service, and makes a tally in a database of the number called. Several structures are described for collecting votes: the subscriber can have one number for each candidate, in which case a call to the number indicates a vote for the corresponding candidate. Alternatively, a single number may be used for all candidates, in which case a caller interaction program asks who the voter is voting for. In either case, the AIN can provide a caller termination announcement.
The '774 patent further describes moving the AIN-local switch interaction from the originating switch to the terminating switch, using a “terminating trigger.” The AIN tabulates the votes in that case as well.
It is known in the telecommunications art to route a call based on call origination information. For example, in emergency systems such as the 911 system, a single number (911) is used over a large geographic area for local emergency services. An emergency 911 call is routed to an emergency center local to the caller based on the calling number.
Similarly, retail goods and services having a telephone contact number that is publicized or marketed nationally or regionally may use a service whereby a call to the nationally-marketed telephone number will be routed to a retail outlet nearest the caller. The routing is based on the Automatic Number Identification (ANI), wherein a caller's telephone number is contained in the call set-up messaging. The AIN accesses a database correlating caller telephone numbers with the closest retail outlets. The AIN looks up the calling number in the database and determines the telephone number of the closest retail location to the caller; it then returns that number to the originating local switch. That switch routes the call to the retail location closest to the caller.
In the above examples of network voting systems, it is the AIN that is tabulating the voting results. That situation creates a bottleneck in that all requests go to a single location. There remains a need for a telephonic voting system that may be used to record opinion during a national or widely-viewed event, while minimizing network congestion caused by the voting calls and reducing or eliminating network access charges to the long distance carrier.